French digital artist Gilles-Alexandre Deschaud has created an ambitious short film entirely from 3D printed parts.

The artist spent two years creating the stop motion animation film, Chase Me, made up of over 2,500 3D printed parts produced on the Formlabs Form 1+ 3D printer. The film is set to premiere at the prestigious Annecy International Animation Festival in June and has also been selected for the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival.

Gilles-Alexandre, a CG animator by trade with a passion for storytelling through mixed media, says his film is about, “embracing your fears, and turning them into something beautiful.” The story begins with a girl walking through a magical forest when her shadow evolves into a monster who chases her through the woods.

Every frame of the film was first designed in CG before being processed into 3D prints. The mise-en-scene was then recreated through stop-motion animation at 15 frames per second to produce the film’s final result.

The set and characters for Chase Me were printed in 100 micron resolution, with minimal finishing beyond the removal of the support material. Bigger pieces, like the tree in the forest, were printed in 22 individual parts, then assembled.

“When I first saw the Form 1 3D printer on Kickstarter, I knew that was what I needed to make a 3D printed film. I wanted to bring 3D printing technology to the art of stop-motion animation to create a new kind of film,” Gilles-Alexandre explained. “I wouldn’t been able to have such tiny, complex and detailed prints without the Form 1 printer.”

Formlabs co-founder Max Lobovsky, commented: “Users like Gilles-Alexandre, who are doing incredible things with the Formlabs 3D printer, inspire us to keep doing what we do. Chase Me is beautiful and powerfully moving, both in aesthetics and its attention to detail.”